Teaching in Circles, Squares, and Triangles.

I'm a big believer in getting "back to the basics."  So I was meditating and looking at Bloom's Taxonomy, hoping that maybe a new idea would just pop into my head.  I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, this new idea could bring my students into a new, higher realm of thinking. 

Instead of coming up with my next million-dollar idea, I started thinking about all of the different learning theorists out there.  We know more about the brain today than we have ever known before.  (What do we not know more about today than we have ever known before?)  Yet, we can't seem to agree on the best way of teaching.  (Or learning, for that matter!) 

First, there was Skinner.  This is the guy who apparently enjoyed being around dogs and giving them food, and making the poor things drool when they heard a bell.  Sure, his work led us to some of the great discoveries in the way that the mind works with the body.  But what did he really contribute?  He published books and articles, and played with peoples' minds.

Then there was Bloom.  I'm quite sure he was a great guy, and he has given us the building blocks for the levels of learning.   As I eluded to before, I often get back to his taxonomy because it helps me quite a bit in the way that I design the units that I teach. 

Now we have Marzano.  If you haven't heard of him, Marzano is the go-to guy in most school districts.  He has published a number of books which sit on the shelves of every principal's book case. (If you don't believe me, just go ask!)  You'll hear about him in all of your school-run professional development sessions.

Now we are moving into the era of Wiggins & McTighe.  These guys want us to go from knowledge to understanding.  They focus on designing curriculum, performance assessments, and instruction. Their big idea was Backward Design.

Why do we have all of these theories?  Why can't someone simply use the scientific method to test the theories and see if they work?  Why can't we just pick one and stick to it?
The answers are quite simple.  These theories are untestable because of the wide variety of clients we're dealing with.  Testing these theories with students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, countries of origin, standards of living, etc. would be an extremely overwhelming undertaking. And from what we now know, the results would be completely different for every subgroup in society.

The question should be why do we need a new theory every couple of decades?  Easy!  Our kids are changing.  The fundamentals of society remain the same.  But all of the changes to the auxiliary aspects of society change quicker and quicker as time goes on.  Children today are growing up in a word way more connected than the world I grew up in (and I'm a young teacher).  So what makes us think that these kids can go from a world of video-game playing and instant feedback into a world in which they have to sit in a room, read a book, and answer the questions at the end of the chapter?  Whether we believe they're changing for the better or for the worst, their ways of thinking are constantly changing.  And these theorists come up with what they believe is the best method of educating all of society.